How Will British Tamils Vote Today?

Today is a big day in Britain. The 2017 General Election to select a new government is underway to decide if Theresa May, from the Conservative party, or Jeremy Corbyn, from the Labour party, will become the new prime minister.

Many British Tamils, who generally support the Labour party, have taken to social media to show their support for Corbyn with quotes and images like these:

“When I was first elected to parliament – before recorded history began (!) – in 1983, there was a useful rule that any MP could take up any immigration case in the country, wherever it was. So every MP had the power to intervene on behalf of an asylum applicant to make representations to the Home Office. Because of the work of volunteers who did hundreds of cases, as a result of this hard work, a very large number of people were not deported to Sri Lanka in 1983, ’84 and ’85.”

“Unless you actually solve the issue of the rights of people for their cultural identity, their language, their life, their freedom, their ability to organise themselves as a community, then the war is not over, the conflict is not over – the situation will only rear its head again. Thousands have died during that war. Thousands have lost their lives and families have suffered as a result of it. So, do we now just say it’s all over or not? No we don’t!”

“When we had the camp in Parliament Square, during the time that people were taking hunger strikes out there to draw attention to the situation in Sri Lanka, 200,000 people marched through the streets of London. I was one of those who joined that march, and I one of the very few people who were not part of the Tamil community to join that march. And I remember to this day – and am still angry about it – the utter silence of the majority of the British and world’s media to the demonstration as well as the cause, as well as the issue.”